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Monday, September 9, 2013

Sponsored review: 1001 extensions + Rainbow hair dye! (ENG/GER)

Woah, what the hell is going on, where do these new GFC followers come from when all I do is post nothing or only shady cell phone photos of my apartment renovation? :'D Anyway - welcome everyone, after a long time I finally have time (and some pics) for a longer entry!

A while ago, I was approached by 1001extensions.de and asked if I would like to review their products. 1001 extensions sells Remy extensions (human hair), and offered me to send me a product of my choice. I gave it a thought, and came to the conclusion that, since my own hair is quite long already, and is also ridiculously thick because I didn't cut it in over a year, I wouldn't really need the extensions to make my hair appear longer or thicker. However, I came up with another idea, and proposed to my contact that I would get blonde extensions instead, and dye them in different colors!

Now that I solved the mystery of the last few photos showing me with colorful strands of hair, I finally had time to write the review and tell the story behind those pics :) The review is bilingual, as the shop is German - but I think if you are interested in ordering, you can find your way around even if you don't speak German.

As far as I know the head company is American. Their German shop has just launched (they also have one in French) and their products are from China (at least this is where my extensions were shipped from).

1001 extensions sells Remy extensions of various colors and lenghts. In case you cannot find your desired color, there's always the option to order blonde hair and dye it yourself, but more on that later!

They have the well known and easy to use clip-in variants, as well as microring extensions and also bonding extensions. I had never heard of the latter before - they can be permanently "glued" to your real hair by applying heat, e.g. with a straightening iron. They also provide you with very decent, downloadable "manuals" on how to use the extensions. For first-time wearers this is a great idea.

Since I didn't order via the normal shop but via e-mail directly, I cannot tell you about the regular ordering process. My extensions were sent via DHL - after I placed my order the contact person answered she would pass the order on and provide me with a tracking number as soon as she had it. However, the packagae unexpectedly arrived 4 work days later before I even got the tracking number :D My name was horribly misspelled by DHL (definitely not the company's fault, as on the package it was correct, but in their software not), but they found me, that's what matters! They promise fast shipping of all orders, so I assume they always ship with DHL.

At this point I should mention that by now, I haven't been to the hair dresser in over a year, so it has not just grown quite long but is also super thick. I used to have a slightly layered cut but there's not much left of it by now and my hair is just mega voluminous. I tried out the extensions right away, and it was quite tricky to place 2 sets on my head as there is just limited space. The result was pretty cool however, the strands blended in well with my own hair, structure wise, and even took on my natural wave. The extensions are well sewn together and the clips are sturdy. I received a handful of extra clips, which I found very helpful, as I had some bad experiences with such clips already, and in case one breaks I can exchange it easily now.

I recieved very smooth and healthy looking, thick hair. I had Remy extensions before, but the had much less mass and were ridiculously thin. One set of these extensions is about half of my hair's volume when straightened, so when wearing two sets I could double my hair volume easily.

If you have thick, shorter hair, I recommend you use two sets, or maybe one and a half. If you have long, thin hair and want it to appear thicker, I think one set is sufficient to achieve a great effect.

As Remy extensions are made of human hair, they can be dyed and styled just as your own hair. My goal was to dye them in different colors and wear them as a colorful eye catcher that contrasts with my black hair. Choosing colors was pretty tricky, but I decided to go for Direction's hair dye, as I still had a pot of Midnight blue at home and found their colors the most intriguing. So I ordered five more colors, directly from the UK.

I combined them three and three, the warmer colors Mandarin, Carnaton Pink and Dark Tulip (the 'Reds'), and Midnight Blue, Violet and Turqouise (the 'Blues'). This way, I thought, I can later wear them separately based, for example, on the colors of my outfit, as well. To avoid mixing of the dyes, I made "pouches" of aluminum foil and placed the strands in them. The goal was to have one extension have all three colors, to achieve a look of differently colored "strands" instead of dying a whole "layer" in one color.

And then it all got really messy :'D
Also, I used up much more color than I had expected. Almost half of the little pots was gone, I suppose I could have diluted them but then again, I wanted to colors to be really virbant and strong. The big advantage of these dyes is that they are somewhat like hair conditioner and so it doesn't harm to keep them on very long. I left my little dye packages like that for about two days and found that the hair had completely absorbed the color!Die Trennung durch Alufolie sollte dazu dienen dass nicht eine Trasse komplett in der selben Farbe gefärbt wird, sondern die breiteren Trassen abwechselnd alle drei Farbtöne aufweisen. Das ganze war eine ziemliche Patzerei. Ich ließ die Strähnen etwa zwei Tage lang so 'einwirken', danach hatten sie die Farbe komplett aufgenommen. Leider waren einige Stellen weiß geblieben, wo ich offenbar schlampig war beim Auftragen - das werde ich bei Gelegenheit nochmal nachfärben.

I soon realized that I was a bit sloppy when applying the dye and there were some spots left that were not dyed at all.... Generally, however, they took the dye really well. The oucome was pretty much as expected and I assume that you could easily dye them whatever color you desire.
After rinsing them with water I left them to dry and later conditioned them with hair oil, because the tips seemed to have taken some damage during the washing. When I received the hair it was super smooth and the tips were beautiful, like fresh cut hair. After washing, I carefully tried to de-tangle the strands and that caused the ends to frizz quite a lot. So the oil helped a bit to make the lower ends more smooth again. Here's the result!

Now, there are some spaces left where you can still see the white blond color, so I will probably dye them again very soon to get rid of that! Also, I really need a hair cut, because one thing is for sure, if my hair was layered they'd come out much more!

Wearing them made my think about my hair a lot once again. I was thinking about cutting it short again and again. With these extensions now I feel like I could comfortably cut my hair short and wear them like a raindbow undercolor! Many people don't even believe that this is my real (black) hair, so why bother anyway?
Then again, I would miss my long, black hair a lot, even though it's inconvenient.
I concluded after a while that I should just go to the goddamn hairdresser already and get the hair thinned our and layered again, I suppose that would already make me a lot happier with my hair, haha! And as soon as I have to money to get a haircut, I will definitely wear the extensions again and take some better photos :3

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